


A Spider’s Reasons

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Flash Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-02
Updated: 2013-09-02
Packaged: 2017-12-25 10:59:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/952283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lord Varys decided a long time ago that the world was overpopulated with fools. This made it a dangerous place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Spider’s Reasons

**Author's Note:**

> Because I suspect Varys is the secret hero of ASOIAF, the only one with the faintest idea what all is going on and what it all means. Or doesn’t mean. Also, he is as fascinating as he is awesome and stylish, and so of course I wanted to figure out what makes him tick. Which I then fit into a flash fic, because it wouldn't fit in a drabble. :-P This is set in the early days, while Robert is still alive, but can mildly spoil later books/episodes. I own nothing.

Lord Varys decided a long time ago that the world was overpopulated with fools. This made it a dangerous place, for while a knave could be bullied, a coward cheaply bought, and a man of ambition bribed, fools blundered about and destroyed everything, then cast around for someone else to blame and destroyed them, too. 

He learned this lesson during his time in Pentos, selling stolen artifacts back to their owners, then stealing the torrid, lowly, foolish little secrets people guarded with their lives. His time in King’s Landing has done nothing to dispel this conviction. To think that anyone with two healthy eyes could have missed that the new king’s children were not the king’s children. That the rest of the Small Council was composed of men of power better suited to the role of fishwives. That one of the cleverest men in the realm was also one of its smallest and most stubbornly independent, which did not bode well for him. That the queen was a knave masquerading ( _poorly_ ) as a woman of ambition. Her brother at least was not a knave or a coward, but he lacked ambition, and so was of little interest to Varys, though the Master of Whisperers took some pleasure in thinking that the realm’s most reviled men was also, in his own way, the one farthest removed from reproach or blackmail. 

These fools called Varys the Spider, feared and distrusted him, as well they should, but for the wrong reasons. Varys knew he would never get respect, which men measured in swords and cocks, and he was not power-hungry, for he had no desire to cling to shadows, tricks done with silk scarves and mirrors. That was for jumped-up whore-mongers like Petyr Baelish. Maybe, Varys sometimes mused, if he had remained a man whole, he would have been as easily distracted or deceived. 

Varys believed in order. Not as an absolute principle, but as a useful bulwark, while it stood. Much like the Wall, built in a time of great need, now a useful symbol but slowly crumbling. He believed in making small moves rather than loud noises, in straight lines of succession and circuitous paths to his goals. People could be quite astute sometimes, so Varys took great care to appear to do nothing but watch and listen and insinuate. He and this realm of fools were the safer for it. 

He was fond of a riddle he sometimes told to test his interlocutor’s wit and intelligence, but he never gave away the answer. It was simple really, quite obvious. The king, the priest and the rich man eventually ate each other and many others besides, and the sellsword was left standing amidst the rubble of their might. Power did not reside in tricks of the light or in words or in strength. It resided in the ability to keep that sellsword at bay, the king, the priest and the rich man poised yet too afraid to strike at each other.


End file.
